1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to programming of data of memory cells, and more particularly, to an apparatus of programming data of memory cells considering a change of a threshold voltage by floating poly coupling among memory cells, and a method using the apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
A threshold voltage of a flash memory cell is controlled to program data in the flash memory cell. That is, the threshold voltage of the flash memory cell indicates programmed data. As data of neighboring memory cells is programmed, the threshold voltage of the flash memory cell becomes greater due to floating poly coupling with the neighboring memory cells. Accordingly, a probability of an occurrence of errors may be increased. To reduce the occurrence of errors being generated due to the floating poly coupling, a shadow programming method is used. The shadow programming method is a scheme of programming data in a memory cell in order to prevent the floating poly coupling from reaching a maximum. The occurrence of errors due to the floating poly coupling may be reduced by programming data which is required to be programmed by a programming process many times. However, the shadow programming method has problems in that, a lifetime of a memory cell is shortened, and a programming time is increased since a programming process is repeatedly performed many times to program a single data.